


Gamma Shift, The Armoury

by Britpacker



Series: Making It Real [1]
Category: Star Trek: Enterprise
Genre: M/M, PWP, Risk Taking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-18
Updated: 2012-10-18
Packaged: 2017-11-16 13:58:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,892
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/540199
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Malcolm Reed always had loved working the graveyard shift.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gamma Shift, The Armoury

**Author's Note:**

> Part one of a series. The boys take a few risks, and bring a few fantasies to life.  
> As usual, unbeta'd, so only the errors are really mine, and apparently random phrases/sentences in italics are inside a character's head.

Ever since his first posting as a green ensign aboard the Cochrane, Malcolm Reed had loved working Gamma shift. With the corridor lights dimmed to half and the few active crew at their stations, talking only in muted tones, he could potter about the armoury without fear of disturbance; check the systems under his control and toy with his latest project safe in the knowledge no interfering superior or emotionally incontinent subordinate would encroach upon his private world.

He’d learned to like it even better since, having become lovers several months ago he and the Chief Engineer usually co-ordinated their fortnightly turn on the graveyard shift, thus granting themselves the luxury of a long lie-in the day after. 

A small furrow cut his brow, his dissatisfaction reflected back to him from the monitor displaying his most recent phase cannon upgrade simulations. Trip would be tucked up in bed and snoring now. The alarm would be set to send him charging down to the mess hall with just enough time to snatch some coffee and a slice of toast before Alpha shift started at 08:00 hours.

Precisely the same time that Malcolm Reed, Lieutenant, would be crawling out of the shower and, still wet, tumbling into bed.

_Bollocks!_

The fact it was his own fault their schedules had been screwed only made matters worse. When Crewman Morozova had commed from Sickbay to dolefully report a case of _both-ends unpleasantness_ (food poisoning, according to Doctor Phlox; as a result of which stern messages about scanning all alien foodstuffs had been addressed to every crewman) following shore leave, he hadn’t hesitated to play the good boss and volunteer to cover her unpopular scheduled shift himself.

Not for the first time, therefore, he found himself cursing that ingrained Reed sense of duty. It would be weeks before he and his lover could synchronise their mornings off again.

“Pull yourself together, Malcolm. You’ll get your next shag before T’Pol has hers, and does she whinge about it?”

Heat scorched his cheeks. Now he was talking to himself. On duty. This was bad.

Concentrating on not losing his concentration, he completely missed the faint buzz of the door opening behind his back. “Evenin’ Lieutenant.”

His heart had leapt into his throat at the first syllable, but his instinctive lunge up to a combat stance subsided with recognition. “Thought you’d be fasto by now,” he said lightly, spinning his chair. 

“I tried, but I jus’ don’t sleep right without you.” Hair on end and barefoot, the Chief Engineer looked adorably rumpled in a well-worn shirt and crumpled sweats, reeking of relaxation and warm sheets. The tip of Reed’s tongue made a slow circuit of his parched lips.

“We could always borrow Porthos’ bed and toss it under my desk?” he suggested, ignoring the pleasurable thrill that his lover’s rich laugh sent through his belly. _God, he’s edible!_

The slight darkening of the Englishman’s changeable eyes did not pass unnoticed: especially as it was the very sign Trip Tucker had wanted before putting his audacious plan into operation. Casually leaning against the doorjamb, he worked his finger over the keypad until a faint whistling sound echoed through the room. 

That won the smallest flaring of the younger man’s nostrils. “What are you playing at, Tucker?” he growled.

Fair brows waggled. “Just keepin’ us safe from pryin’ eyes, babe.”

The second growl was feral, and it hit him right in the wedding tackle. “You may be off-duty, Commander. _I_ am not. And what if someone else decides to pay me a visit?”

“Relax.” Yes, Malcolm was stoked if the endearment could pass unprotested. “There’s only two people can override my lockouts. The Cap’n’s in bed, and – well, do you _really_ wanna leave me all alone in here, Lieutenant?”

That voice. Husky with promise, it trickled down his spine like ice cream on a scorching day, radiating tingles wherever it touched. Swallowing hard, the Englishman surrendered what little control he had left of his domain.

“No.”

His partner’s mouth relaxed into the slow-uncurling sensual smile that turned his knees to water every time. “I’m real glad to hear that, Mister Reed,” he purred, closing the distance between them while the smaller man stared, convulsive swallows making his adam’s apple bob in unison with his rising cock. “Wanna know what I was thinkin’ of, layin’ in bed all alone?”

Fixated on the prominent bulge that threatened to rip the man’s pants, Malcolm squeezed out a breathy reply. “I think I can guess.”

Too late he tried to step away, only succeeding in getting himself jammed between the main weapons console and the equally unyielding body of his companion, each subtle throb in his nether regions being matched by an increase in the pressure against his abdomen. Mindless, he pushed onto tiptoes, needing that smouldering heat closer to his own. 

Trip’s chuckle whispered in his ear. With a small shuffle he aligned his erection to rub, like a cat demanding to be stroked, against Reed’s. “Oh, I don’t think so,” he crooned, one hand beginning a slow, easy slide up and down the Englishman’s extended spine. “You got _no_ idea how imaginative I can get when I’m lonesome.”

“Tell me.” Duty. The numberless hostile species that might be lurking behind any piece of debris they passed. Training. Even the contemptuous expression on Stuart Reed’s face when his son and heir _disgraced the family name_ and did his own thing again. They all surged up in Malcolm Reed’s mind for a moment, only to be blotted out by the primal force of need for his lover’s touch.

It was Tucker’s turn to swallow hard, eloquence deserting him at the challenge. Heavy-lidded storm-coloured eyes lifted to his face; a sultry smile made his heart rate surge. “Or better still – show me.”

He couldn’t believe he was allowing this. Encouraging it, Malcolm corrected when he was next let up for air, his lips bruised and tingling and the top half of his jumpsuit hanging below the waist. Sex in the armoury. During his shift.

He refused to admit it had ever crossed his mind.

“Tell me you’ve fantasised about this too.” 

“Oh, yes!”

_Oh, damn!_

A dozen Suliban cell ships could have been pounding the ship and he wouldn’t have noticed, but the subtlest change in his lover’s perfect skin tone showed up on Trip’s internal sensors like a solar flare. “You and me makin’ love surrounded by long, hard things that go _boom_ ,” he crooned, shucking out of his crumpled shirt before the younger man could pop another row of buttons clean off. “Gotta go for that, huh?”

“Hmmm.” Enthralled by the play of muscle rippling down to the man’s waistband as his fingers strayed that way Malcolm permitted himself to be manipulated away from the console and out of his remaining clothes, straining to press up against any piece of warm, enticing flesh he could reach with Trip guiding him backward until his shins hit the starboard torpedo platform. Another moment and the Southerner was equally naked, rubbing himself along the Englishman’s length as if they were magnetised. “Look at us.”

“Sonofabitch.” Every surface in Reed’s realm shone, reflecting their nude images back at a dozen different angles: Trip’s honey gleam and Malcolm’s creamy pallor softened at the edges yet as identifiable as if they were encircled by mirrors. “Ain’t that the sexiest thing?”

He was treated to a lascivious once-over. “Not quite. Trip!”

“Trust me.” 

It was, he knew, the biggest thing he could ask; burned too often, Mal didn’t give his trust easily. When he did – oh, boy. He gave it completely, and Trip Tucker was about to take shameless advantage of the fact.

Sharp teeth snagged in a shapely bottom lip. “Always.”

A wave of tenderness washed over the older man, briefly swamping lust as he swooped down for a breathtaking kiss. “Been dreamin’of havin’ you draped over one of your damn torpedoes, Lootenant,” he whispered against Malcolm’s open mouth, his fiery blush a mix of embarrassment and dizzying arousal. “Your gorgeous ass in the air, humpin’ that damn missile while I fuck you so hard…

A little sob broke free of the brunet’s throat as he slipped out of Trip’s hold and turned, splaying himself out along the torpedo’s length like an old-fashioned glamour model on a velvet couch. His hands wrapped around the tapered warhead Malcolm lifted his hips, pushing his milky butt into the air. 

Breathing, Trip discovered, suddenly required a conscious effort. Satin skin over icy metal; hot, living flesh on that gleaming instrument of death. It was all so much more erotic than even his restless imagination had conceived.

Malcolm rested his cheek against the chilly surface, enjoying the coldness against his flushed skin. “Like this?” he asked, giving a wriggle to intensify the chilling sensation along his underside. Trip’s head jerked.

“Oh, yeah.” _Just like that._

“Good.” Letting his eyes close, the Armoury Officer shifted again, trying to get comfortable with the hinges across the warhead and propulsion compartments biting into his chest and gut. 

It couldn’t be done, but he didn’t care. The minimal discomfort only heightened the pleasurably languorous sensuality that engulfed him. A sigh escaped his puckered lips at the faint stirring of the air behind him, proof his erotic display had had the desired effect. Another moment and Trip’s welcome weight was on him, his body’s blazing heat a delicious contrast with the obstinate chill against Reed’s front.

The sigh became a moan at the play of slippery fingers dipping into his cleft. Warm liquid gushed between his cheeks, pooling on the torpedo casing with the first drops of sweat and pre-come. He bucked softly, needing to relieve the pressure on his imprisoned penis, another sigh mutating into a wail as a talented hand wormed its way into the gap to cup his aching flesh. “I gotcha,” Trip murmured, a third finger squeezing through the loosened ring of his anal muscles. The supple digits flexed, brushing across his hottest spot, and the moan became an inarticulate cry.

That cry broke Trip Tucker’s heart. Awkward with one hand, he drenched his aching erection in oil, parted the glorious cheeks and drove himself home in one long, firm stroke.

The sheer wonder of it overwhelmed him every time he penetrated Malcolm Reed’s magnificent body and he had to pause at the deepest point, his face nestling into the smaller man’s dark hair, to savour the sensation to its fullest before his body took charge and his hips began to grind, pushing him in and out, feeling the silky strong walls flex against every millimetre of his bloated cock. Over the roar of blood in his ears he heard his partner’s huffing breaths and the slapping sounds of damp flesh against metal as the smaller man squirmed, forward into his pumping hand and back onto his thrusting dick, arching until the broad head grazed his prostate.

The moment he found that sweet spot Trip went for it like a mastiff at a bone, the erotic scenario he’d spent so long constructing forgotten in the white-hot bliss of his lover’s climax. The heavy organ in his hand slipped, fluid spurting to heat their metallic mattress, and then the armoury exploded in a blinding silver flash as he stiffened, strained, and let himself fly.

One of the galaxy’s great mysteries in Trip Tucker’s estimation was the length of time it took for reality to return after he climaxed inside his darling. Time seemed to slow and the air grow treacly as they slumped, draped like molten honey over their missile, content just to wait for the room to stop spinning like an old-time fairground ride. “Y’okay?” he asked, the words thick and distant.

“Mmmm, heavenly.” Malcolm craned his neck, puckered lips silently demanding a kiss and Trip obliged, drowning in the unexpectedly sweet taste of an orifice most of Enterprise’s crew would guess to be tart as lemon juice. “Don’t move.”

“Gotta.” Though both men squeaked at the friction of over-sensitised tissues he managed to disengage and wobble to a vertical position, sated lusts rearing again at the sheer dissoluteness of the scene. Two of his favourite substances, milk and chocolate, seemed to dribble down the weapon’s glinting sides as the pale-skinned brunet squirmed, evidently as content as if he lay on a feather mattress. “Oh, man. There’s a sight I won’t forget anytime soon.”

“Glad you approve.” The insidious burn of a metal ridge cutting his stomach began to penetrate his happy daze, harbinger of an ominous realisation. “Oh, fuck!”

Another of life’s miracles, Tucker conceded: how fast Enterprise’s outwardly stoic Armoury Officer could switch mood. “Easy, Malcolm,” he warned, swooping in to offer a steadying hand to the man’s ungainly rise. “It’s the middle of the night, an’ we’re hangin’ in empty space. Nobody needs savin’ today, so kick back an’ enjoy, okay?”

“I promised myself: no sex on duty. What have you done to me, Charles Tucker?”

He looked utterly woebegone – except, Trip realised, for the bright blue glint of mischief in the depths of those astonishing eyes. “Looks like ah’ve gone an’ corrupted you, Lootenant,” he drawled, fighting the impulse of his mouth to curl up in an unrepentant grin. “Sorry ‘bout that.”

“You couldn’t lie to save your life, could you?” It was, Reed considered, difficult to hold the poise of the dedicated officer while stark naked, still high from a stupendous climax and with a lover’s come ticklish as it trickled down one’s legs. Trip shrugged, casually tossing a pair of shockingly bright standard-issue blues his way.

“Nah. And neither can you when you’ve just been laid. Wanna get dressed anytime before Alpha shift gets here?”

A glance at the chronometer guaranteed him the lazy lift of a fine dark brow. “We’ve got hours yet, but you’re right. Shouldn’t work naked around explosives. Not good practice.”

“Pity.” Later, Tucker suspected, he’d catch hell for what they’d done – and of course it would all be his fault, Southern boys with their big blue eyes and their seductive drawls enticing upright, responsible Englishmen into trouble. Right now, making a languid performance of dressing, Mal was feeling too damn good to catalogue the what-might-have-been’s.

“Pity Engineering needs three crew at all times.” His hair, Reed decided with a shudder, was beyond redemption, but by 0800 he could have done enough crawling through the local maintenance shafts to appear dishevelled without suspicion. “Trip? Enterprise to Commander Tucker. You still in there?”

“I gotta talk to T’Pol about that,” the blond choked out, his tanks refilled in record time by the merest allusion to his most cherished fantasy. “It's jus' not necessary to have that many people millin’ around my engine room at midnight.”

“Starfleet Command might disagree, love.” The mobile features he loved twisted with clownish dismay. Passing by for a cloth to wipe his abused torpedo Malcolm pressed a kiss against the man’s tempting neck for the simple pleasure of tasting the saltiness of his sweat. “And I’d pay to see you trying to persuade the Vulcan Mistress of the logic!”

“Heck, she don’t even get why senior officers take their turns on Gamma shift in the first place.” He liked T’Pol – more than liked her, Tucker conceded, he cared for her as he did only the most select band of irreplaceable friends. But damn, her condescending disdain for humanity’s egalitarian little ways made him steam!

“I’ve tried to point out the rationale, but that’s the bugger with Vulcans; once they’ve made up their minds on a point, even logic won’t sway ‘em. And why are we discussing our First Officer, not how very much I love you?”

“Aw, Mal!” He never said it at the conventional time, but Trip had learned not to expect it. Malcolm’s spontaneous, out-of-the-blue declarations were way sweeter than most folks’ trite post-coital murmurings, and much more heartfelt. “Love you too, darlin’. Whatcha think you’re doin’?”

“Wiping my come off our primary defensive capability, what does it look like?”

Shaking his head, Trip moved to still his lover’s hand. “Leave a little as a souvenir, alright?” he wheedled. Both brows made a rapid ascent to the hairline.

“That way, next time the cap’n asks you to blow the bad guys into next week, a little bit of you’ll be goin’ along.”

His eyes betrayed Malcolm long before his lips lost the battle and parted into a brilliantly wicked grin. “He’d better find us someone to shoot at soon, then,” he said, tossing the stained cloth back into his open toolbox. Trip cocked his head at him. “Because I’m going to get hard every time I walk in with that still here. Now get out – you’ve distracted me quite enough for one shift, Commander! Lunch, 1200 hours?”

“I’ll be there. With a final peck on the cheek for luck, Trip Tucker unlocked the armoury and sauntered back to his quarters, whistling every step of the way.

With a last lingering look at the starboard torpedo, Lieutenant Malcolm Reed sprayed a fine mist of pungent cleaning agent into the air, instantly disguising the unmistakable heavy musk of recent sex, turned his back on his beloved weapons and applied himself to the latest cannon calibrations with a faint, sardonic smile on his lips.

He always had loved working the Gamma shift.


End file.
